My boyfriend and I have recently found out that we have bedbugs. We contacted landlord and are supposed to be having pest control come out in a couple days for treatment. We received a list of things to do that included washing and drying all clothing. I’m not opposed to washing and drying all my clothes, but my boyfriend doesn’t want to put most of his clothes in the dryer due to some of them being expensive and/or brand new. We can’t afford to take them to the dry cleaners either. If there are no visible signs on clothes of bugs is it safe to not put them in the dryer, or will that possibly cause a problem? We also have quite a bit of sneakers that are stored in the boxes, and I’m not sure how to go about dealing with those? Any advice?

Have you had an inspection to determine how advanced the infestation is? Is it contained to the bed area only in just one room or is it spread out in different places in the room or multiple rooms? Has it been going on for months or just a few weeks? If it's spread out or has been going on for a while to the point where you have several hundred to thousands of bugs, it would be worth it to at least dry everything you can to be safe. If not, you might be able to get away with not drying some clothes further away from the activity but you would probably want to not bag those clothes up. That way, if there were any bugs in it, they would be free to leave the clothes looking for you and cross poison while it's fresh after treatment and die. If you bag up clothes that you aren't planning on drying, you risk trapping bugs in a safe environment until you reopen the bags later when the residuals have lost their effect and reinfesting your place.

In my case, we did all of the clothes that were in furniture near the bed and emptied the drawers for treatment but left clothes hanging in the closet which was on the other side of the room from the bed. We caught it pretty early though so they hadn't spread to anywhere other than the bed area. I'm no expert though. Shoes would be a good candidate for steaming but I'm a big fan of steam.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
Not an expert. Just a survivor who's still learning.
Vince

We bagged all our clothes and dried them but one of my PCOs said that while we should bag our clothes and linens to make treatment easier (less clutter) that we could unbag them immediately after treatment since any bugs in our clothes would crawl out and go into the pesticides anyway and die. He said keeping them in bags and opening them later just might release a stray bug or two when the pesticide isn’t as fresh and effective.

We didn’t really have a very thorough inspection. We called a company on our own and the guy basically just looked around with a flashlight on his phone. He didn’t find any bugs in any room other than our bedroom. We found our very first bedbug about a month or two ago and killed it. Once about a month had passed I thought we were in the clear because we didn’t see anymore. We both work at the same place (call center environment), and there have been reports of bedbugs, so we just thought we had picked that one up. Within the last week we have found 4 total, one every other day. The PCO that did the brief inspection checked our mattress and didn’t find anything like fecal matter on the mattress. He said he was pretty confident that they were in the box spring. We have 3 closets in our bedroom, the one with all of my stuff is across the room from the bed, but I’m not opposed to washing and drying all my clothes, just wondering about my shoes. The other 2 closets are right next to the bed where my boyfriends clothes are at.

So if he bags up all the clothes he doesn’t want to dry together and then put them back in the closet, they will crawl out of the clothes if they’re in there? Or will they possibly hide and re-invest later on? If we closely inspect clothing is it possible that’s good enough, or do they actually burrow and hide in the fabric where the eyes can’t see? Or is the concern eggs?

I think clothes hanging in the closet aren't as big of a risk as clothes piled on the floor. You might not find some eggs or even bugs with a visual inspection on your clothes if they are hidden in seams or zippers but if you have them out of bags so that the bugs can eventually leave the clothes or even eggs after a week will hatch and the babies will walk off of the clothes, they will come in contact with the pesticides and hopefully meet their end. There is definitely some peace of mind to be had from throwing a few bags of clothes in the dryer so you know for sure that there is nothing on them and you can wear them out and about or over to other people's homes without worrying about spreading bugs. If you get lucky and are able to get rid of them with just a couple of treatments in a few weeks then that will be great. If you struggle to wipe them out for months as some people unfortunately have to do, eventually not only are you willing to launder every piece of clothing you own, you are pretty much willing to sew new clothes by hand if you have to, to get rid of them. Hopefully you caught it early enough that it won't be too bad.